Down Is Up

If it didn't begin with Newt Gingrich, he certainly got the stone rolling down hill with his memo. Truth is irrelevant; in fact, it's best avoided. Make stuff up. Such is the central theme, the governing (as it weren't) principle of Republican leaders, and of those tasked with spreading their messages. And, oh, how well it works.

More than anything else, this is what bothers me so deeply about our political present, and future: that the opposition has resorted to overt lying in order to regain power. Redoubled, reiterated, reinforced by a dominant media network, their message takes hold disturbingly easily and thoroughly. And so it is that speeches like this get cheers -- not to mention other pretty ugly responses.

See, it's not as if there's nothing to criticize about President Obama, or about legislation that's come down the pike. But, long ago, Republicans realized that defending their central tenets of deregulation, tax cuts, and theocracy has gotten harder and harder as reality has shown the dangers and/or unworkability of each. Arguing their case on the merits has become all but impossible; it's a lot easier to distort ideas put forth by Democrats than it is to come up with their own new and useful ones. But if it became obvious that their core beliefs were anything but brilliant, their response to that realization most certainly was.

Brilliant.

Concluding they could no longer argue the rightness of their Ronaldian failures, they made that swift-slick and sly-sick calculation: we can still win elections without the work of producing ideas if we're willing to rewrite the past and lie about the present; the American voter is nothing if not malleable, gullible, and willingly ill-informed, they figured, and, boy, have they been right. Of what have they convinced their followers, whom they hold in such low esteem? Socialism! Soft on terror! Apology tours! Government takeover! Coming after your guns! Coming after your children! Giveaway to the banks! How else to explain the Republican filibuster of Wall Street reform, than that they figure they can lie about it with impunity; that they can keep bedding with bankers, and no one will care; that they can call their shit shinola and their RWS™ will fan it from the flatscreens, and the teabaggers will nod their heads, raise their fists, mad as hell without two facts to rub together in their low-taxed, gun-totin', misunderstood-Constitution-carrying hands.

As pathetic as Congressional Republican leaders are, as devoid of ethics as the RWS™ and their "news" channel may be, I'm not certain they're stupid enough to believe that stuff themselves. Which makes it worse. Following that Newtonian lead, they've overboarded all pretense and moved on without shame, leaving conscience behind, counting on the baseness of their base and the credulity of the rest. They have yet to be disappointed.

I know I repeat myself. I wish I could let it go. And, most assuredly, I continue to believe George Bush is the worst president of my lifetime and well beyond, with Ronald Reagan close at his neck. But at least I have facts on which to base my arguments. I don't make stuff up, I don't use words chosen for me by others. I point to actual events, positions, results. How few there are on the right that do the same, as relates to their commentary about Barack Hussein Obama.

Which is worse? The cynicism of the right wing leaders and their mouthpieceri, or the fact that they've found such fertile soil in which to dig? Either way, it bespeaks the coming of the end.

If I believed we could survive it, I'd say what the hell. Take that former half-term governor of a socialist state and stick her in the White House. Give John Boner the Speakership, McConnell the leadership, and let's do it all again: let's further widen the gap between rich and poor, let's Christianize our war plans once again, further theocratize our schools, let's cut taxes even more, privatize social security, unfetter all businesses from any regulation, let's drill everywhere, abandon CAFE standards, let's find another country to invade. Let's lift our middle fingers once again to the rest of the world, round up a few more American citizens and deny them counsel, let's repeal health care legislation, take away all equality for gays, and, while we're at it let's forget about stem cell research, let's outlaw Islam, jail brown people now and ask questions later.

But the thing is, as the passage of less than a sequiyear's time has shown, people have no political memory. Such destruction as would be wreaked, such proof, once again, of the fraud that is the tax-cut-deregulation-heterowhitesonly sum of all parts of the current Republican party, would no more bring the country to its senses than has, mere months later, the meltdown brought on by Bush, riding the coattails of Reagan, and the rhetoric born of Gingrich/Rove/Delay/Armey.

Newt may not have been the first to stumble upon the power of dishonesty. Sarah may not be the first to parlay it so recklessly. But their timing has been perfect. And not even Newt could have known that a mere few years after he opened his mouth, there'd be tea people only too happy to dip their bags right in.